Regulation suffocating TV - Fincham

By Anonymous

Friday, August 22, 2008

Mr Fincham, who resigned as controller of BBC One following the misleading footage of the Queen, said the future of popular programming from Britain's Got Talent to the Champions League Final were under threat from the "box-ticking" culture.

He accused regulator Ofcom of imagining "television as a form of social engineering" in its blueprint for the future of broadcasting and of not living in the real world. Its picture of the future was a "recipe for the niche, the marginal, the worthy", he said, adding. "Trying hanging them outside West End theatre. See who buys a ticket".

Mr Fincham said: "Television needs regulators, just as roads need traffic wardens. But you wouldn't ask your traffic warden to give you advice on what sort of car to buy, still less how to drive it."

If the box-ticking culture was followed, Saturday nights would be "scrapped completely", he said. "Let's scrap Saturday nights completely. Drama's out, and comedy too. No role for sport - the Champions League final, Euro 2008, the Olympics. The 14 million people who tuned into the final of Britain's Got Talent weren't there to be entertained but to watch TV promote understanding of religions, culture and lifestyles."

He told the Edinburgh International Television Festival: "Trust audiences and trust their tastes and you won't come unstuck."

Mr Fincham, delivering the annual MacTaggart lecture, said: "I worry that we've lost sight of what makes programmes worth watching in the first place - creativity, imagination, invention.

"That television is there to delight, to surprise and to inspire, above all to enjoy. It's not a branch of the education service. Wrap it up in the woolly words of political correctness and the short term illusion of warmth will soon give way to the reality of suffocation."

Ofcom's report contained "the deathless language of the committee, each word carefully weighed, balanced and rinsed of all life and passion; a definition of public service broadcasting that exists only in the minds of those whole job it is to write such definitions," he said.

Mr Fincham told the audience: "Between now and 2012 we have a choice: we could let fragmentation wash the existing order away and seek comfort in television that ticks the right boxes; or we can fight to say that the 'broad' is a key part of 'broadcasting' that television will serve society better if it unites audiences than if it scatters them."